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Frank Curre

On December 7, 1941, 2,403 Americans died when hundreds of Japanese fighter planes attacked the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor in Oahu, Hawaii.

After convincing his mother to sign his enlistment papers, Frank Curre joined the Navy at 17 years old. In August 1941, he went aboard the battleship USS Tennessee and was in the mess cooking on the day of the attack.

At StoryCorps, he shared his harrowing recollections.

Frank died on December 7, 2011, the 70th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. He was 88 years old.

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Frank Curre (FC)

FC: When I got out of high school I went looking for a job. Couldn’t find it, so I told Mama, ”I’m joining the Navy and you have to sign the papers because I’m only 17.” I said, ”If you don’t sign the papers for me, Mama, I’ll go downtown and get a hobo to sign ’em.”

I finally convinced her. And I went aboard the battleship in August. We headed for Pearl Harbor. I’d never even heard of it. I didn’t even know what it was. The day of the attacks I was mess cooking. We hear this big blast, instantaneously another blast, and we come up there topside. I saw the first god-awful sight I witnessed that day. That’s when the bomb come down that hit the ARIZONA. That ship come 12 to 15 foot in the air, broke in two and settled back down. If you’d a had a bag of popcorn, and you’d a went out here in the breeze and threw it up in the air — that was bodies that went out all over that harbor.

All those that could, started picking ’em up as soon as they could. We going to get in the barges, help ’em go pick bodies up out of the water. One of ’em come up, he said, he approached a young man in the water, and as he approached him, the young man severely burned and everything, he said ”Do not touch me.” He said, ”I’ve gotta touch you, I’ve gotta get you medical help.”

And when he reached out to help the boy in, what he grabbed a hold of come right off in his hand, just like that boy had been cooked on a stove. I still have the nightmares, never got over the nightmares. And with God as my witness, I read my paper this morning and right now I can’t tell you what I read. I can’t remember. But what happened on that day is tattooed on your soul.